reckless disregard of their lives, a tenacity and cool courage which was
only equalled by the cool determination of the French. Five months after
the opening of this great battle, the unofficial estimate of German dead
was a half million men. The assailants fought their way to within three
miles and a half of the fortress itself, but there they were finally
halted. It was then that the tide turned; and though the Germans surged
forward day after day in heavy masses they progressed no further. It was
the beginning of the end.

The Germans advanced confidently. The destruction of the fortress
presented no hard problem to them. The utter worthlessness of similarly
fortified positions had been proven in the earlier days of the war--in
the destruction of Louvain, Liège, Brussels and Antwerp, the latter the
most strongly fortified city in the world, with the exception of Paris
itself. The huge 42-centimetre guns of the Germans had battered them to
pieces in little or no time at all.

It was with the knowledge of the effectiveness of these great guns that
the Crown Prince opened the battle of Verdun. The fortress of Verdun and
the outlying fortifications, it was believed, would be shattered with
little effort. With these facts in mind, the German Crown Prince opened
with his big guns, first upon the fortresses guarding Verdun itself.

These approaches shattered, the Crown Prince ordered his infantry and
cavalry to the attack. But where the onrushing Germans, according to the
reasoning of the Crown Prince, should have found no resistance, they
encountered strenuous opposition. Abandoning the outlying artificial
fortifications, the French had thrown up huge earthworks and from behind
these received the German attacks coolly.